Manish Kumar Jha, a Jamshedpur-based scientist, claims he has devised a way by which gold can be extracted from defunct mobiles and computers.
“Mobile’s circuit board and computer’s mother board has gold, silver and platinum parts in them,” he says, adding that if used properly, 350 gm gold can be extracted from 1 tonne of old defunct electronic equipment.
The more the concentration of gold in phones, the better the sound and connectivity.
Manish explains how the gold is extracted.
“First, the mobile phone has to be dismantled to get the PCB which has gold. Then, using thiourea, cyanide and thiosulphate, the gold is melted. Using electro-winning process, charcoal is mixed with the PCB remains and heated on high temperature. It is then that the gold separates from the PCB,” he says.
